An Analysis on Premium Value of Moral Right of Author in Japanese Copyright Law: Based on Intellectual Property High Court Judge from 2005 to 2010

Digital contents are widely distributed over the Internet, as they are less in transferring cost and more in user-friendliness than previous contents confined in real media. This situation has caused increased discussion and conflict of interest between stakeholders of digital contents, especially between contents holders and distributors. For contents holders´ side, moral right of author in copyright law is a powerful tool for insisting distribution control of their contents, including the prohibition of distribution. On the contrary, distributors appealed face the risk under this moral right of author in copyright law. Therefore, concrete interpretation of moral right of author in copyright law is critical for stable settlement of such disputes. However, interpretation of moral right of author in copyright law has shown variations, and there are few researches in this field. In order to clarify interpretation of copyright law, I calculated premium value of moral right of author from the viewpoint of Law and Economics. I analyzed nine cases of compensation judge in Intellectual Property High Court Judge in Japan between 2005 and 2010 as a preliminary research. Based in the nine judges, I compared calculated damages by moral right of author and property right. I am going to improve the research framework toward analyzing all Japanese final judgments between 1997 and 2010.